February 21, 2003

A Ghostly Feeling - Indulge Me Please

Shelley has some interesting thoughts today about the good, bad, and ugly of writing professionally. In typical blogerrific synchronicity, I'd been sitting here thinking similar thoughts--differently--when I came upon Shelley's thoughts.

Here's the thing.

Like Shelley, I've been writing professionally for a long time. Some days it seems really long. Really really long. I've been on the corporate side, I've been on the agency side, and I've done things for and by me-myself-and-I.

But unlike Shelley who has quite a list of credits to her name, I have earned my living--a good living--as other people's voices. Snatched up early by smart CEOs who recognized my ability to get inside their heads and say what they would like to say how it should be said, I became the perfect ghost writer. When you perfect this kind of business writing, it is more science than art. Mostly, you're a sponge.

During the tech boom, I had the opportunity to be inside some giant brilliant amazing galactical heads, to speak with and for these people through my writing. What I absorbed from them--from everyone I've worked with--goes right into the old file drawer in my mind. In essence, I get their smarts; they get my voice. We both get paid. Fair trade.

When I was in my twenties and thirties, though, my husband used to ask, "Doesn't it bother you that so much of what you write has other people's names on it? I mean, it's yours. Why isn't your name on it? You just wrote this 200-page book, and you let them put their names on it." And I would answer, quite truthfully, that no, it wouldn't be PR if my name were on it. And it didn't bother me at all. They got my anonymity; I got a good paycheck.

Interestingly, with blogging something has changed for me.

During my part-time day, I write in my paid-for voice, and then, like Clark Kent, I sneak into a phone booth and slip out of my silly work clothes into my super blogger crime fighter outfit -- it's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's me.

Lately I've been feeling a little bit ghostly about my ghost writing. Part of it is, having gotten used to the ownership of my own voice in blogging, it's getting harder to put aside my "jeneane" voice and do the daytime switcheroo with the person I'm writing for.

Fascinating. A little unnerving too.

The other part of my shakey-ground feeling is that I've never had the person whose voice I've channeled go away. Bare with me. This one's tough for me. And I'm writing to try to figure out why.

A few weeks ago I found out that my boss has decided to explore some new career opportunities--i.e., he's leaving. And, he's leaving me. I've only recently recongized that this is a pretty big thing for me, a pretty big thing for a writer who's been writing closely with and for someone for nearly six years.

Surely, I've parted ways with other boss/clients, right? Well, yes. That's true. And that's why I've been knocking my hand against my head trying to figure out why this feels so different. Why I feel abandoned.

I think I've got it: In every other job, I've done the departing. Three times by choice, once not. Nonetheless, they stayed and I went.

Sounds weird doesn't it?

Oddly, this way, I feel vulnerable and left without anyplace to put my voice, and I get teary eyed thinking, he's going. He's really going.

We writers who write for other people, the connection we develop with those people from climbing around inside their heads--absorbing their thoughts, learning their cadence, understanding their triggers, what matters to them, what doesn't, why, how their phrasing works, their inflections, how they think when they're tired, how they sound when they're jazzed, how to be them without being them--that's a hard bond to break.

In my case--I don't know how it works for everyone--I really have to like the people I'm writing for. There are degrees, sure. You can write for a corporation (read: client) and write professionally with flair and passion because you know that voice--you have it down pat. You've won awards for it. It's not too difficult once you've done it for a couple of decades.

But writing for someone -- really connecting with that person, locking eyes with them and grabbing at their synapses with yours until you achieve nothing short of a mind-meld -- that's really special. It bonds you in a very unusual way. Words unspoken, for some minutes or hours, you share a brain.

And so my boss--a friend and colleague I respect deeply, and with whom I've achieved this kind of voice/mind connection--is moving on.

Going. Away.

And I feel like a voice without a mouth.

Wandering. Alone. Quiet. Ghostly.